Appointment to Seminary

[Theognome]

A question: Are there seminaries that require sponsorship from a governing church body before being admitted?

I ask this because, both in the OPC and URCNA, I've heard a number of students from MARS and WTS(CA) preach (or exhort, however you wanna label it). In many cases, the students, while obviously inexperienced, none the less demonstrate a gift- if not calling- to preaching. Others seemed like they'd have more success if they herded cats.

I do know that not all seminary students attend for the purpose of a career in the pulpit- many study for academic careers, personal reasons and whatnot. But I recall one young man I chatted with a while back who said that he was attending the seminary because after his BA, it was a path that would get him a good paying job with decent security and benefits. This rubbed my fur the wrong way. I asked him if his 'calling' to be a pastor was attested to or confirmed by the elders of his church, and his reply was just a blank stare, followed by, "What would they have to do with it?"

What would they have to do with it? Should they have something to do with it?

Theognome

 

[N. Eshelman]

Puritan Seminary does not require you to be a student under care of your presbytery (or session or ___insert government word here___).

Of course, if you are being sent out to preach, it is understood that you must follow the polity of your denomination or church.

I know men who are in seminary for personal enrichment. Some are ruling elders, some just love Jesus and want to know about him more. Personally, I do not think these students should take homiletics courses- but that is just MHO.

 

[Blue Tick]

In order to be a student and get accepted at Greenville Theological Seminary a potential student must be under care of his Presbytery.

 

[larryjf]

At The North American Reformed Seminary prospective students are required to have a recommendation from a local church officer.

 

[Zenas]

If I were to go, I would go for personal study.

That aside, the church that would call the gentleman you described probably deserves him.

 

[DMcFadden]

Bill, it is a mixed bag. Some seminaries require it, all should do so. After examining between 450-500 candidates for ordination over the last three decades, I will tesitfy that you can sure see the ones for whom the local church was significantly involved in identifying, supporting, and nurturing their sense of call and those who are more or less free lancers.

 

[R. Scott Clark]

At WSC students are required to provide an academic and ecclesiastical reference for admission. Students need not be under care because not all are in the MDiv and not all MDiv students are necessarily ready to be in Reformed pulpits.

In the case of a student who spoke thus, you should call his seminary and talk to his faculty advisor or dean of students. The should know about his immaturity. Preaching is a sacred calling and not just some job to be filled. Further, this boy (and I used that term deliberately) clearly knows nothing about the reality of ministerial life! You would also do well to call his consistory/session and let them know about his immaturity.

Congregations who invite students to fill their pulpits to exhort have a duty to be sure that the students they invite are ready for that responsibility, that the student being invited been licensed by a classis or a congregation or a Presbytery (and thus, is under care). They would also do well to speak to his teachers before unleashing him on a congregation. I do occasionally get such calls but not very often.

As I've said before, I'm often frustrated and disappointed when congregations complain (not in this case) about the graduates the seminaries are "sending" them when they do not bother to pick up the phone to find out about the man they calling to candidate or fill a pulpit or whatever. The seminary is not the church. It serves the church but it isn't the church. The consistory/session is charged with guarding the pulpit and to make sure that only qualified people exhort and preach.

If a WSC student does a poor job filling the pulpit at Covenant URC, I should very much like to know about it. Our calling is to train preachers of the Word and if a student is not doing what has been taught or needs correction we need to know about it.

Thanks.

 

[Theognome]

At WSC students are required to provide an academic and ecclesiastical reference for admission. Students need not be under care because not all are in the MDiv and not all MDiv students are necessarily ready to be in Reformed pulpits.

In the case of a student who spoke thus, you should call his seminary and talk to his faculty advisor or dean of students. The should know about his immaturity. Preaching is a sacred calling and not just some job to be filled. Further, this boy (and I used that term deliberately) clearly knows nothing about the reality of ministerial life! You would also do well to call his consistory/session and let them know about his immaturity.

Congregations who invite students to fill their pulpits to exhort have a duty to be sure that the students they invite are ready for that responsibility, that the student being invited been licensed by a classis or a congregation or a Presbytery (and thus, is under care). They would also do well to speak to his teachers before unleashing him on a congregation. I do occasionally get such calls but not very often.

As I've said before, I'm often frustrated and disappointed when congregations complain (not in this case) about the graduates the seminaries are "sending" them when they do not bother to pick up the phone to find out about the man they calling to candidate or fill a pulpit or whatever. The seminary is not the church. It serves the church but it isn't the church. The consistory/session is charged with guarding the pulpit and to make sure that only qualified people exhort and preach.

If a WSC student does a poor job filling the pulpit at Covenant URC, I should very much like to know about it. Our calling is to train preachers of the Word and if a student is not doing what has been taught or needs correction we need to know about it.

Thanks.

Unfortunately, that young gentleman is already graduated and has gone off to who knows where. That conversation toook place several years ago, when I was in California.

I haven't seen any WSC students at my current church, likely due to geography. Most of the MARS folk that have come to our church lately (lots of them since we lack a pastor) seem to be on the right path. Two of them, however, were quite odd. One began to use Roman Catholicism as an example in his exhorting, claiming it to be a true church. I approached him after the service, and, after pointing out some things he said that were edifying and biblically sound, asked why he would make such a claim in a church that stands upon confessions that refute such things. His response was a rather flippant, "at least I'm current with the times" and walked off.

I realize that a seminary is not a church, and thus isn't an ecclesiastical authority per-se. But if someone pursuing the path of the pastorate seems ill-fitted to the task while attending, do some staff members counsel such a man to consider a different path? Would doing that be improper or problematic?

Theognome

 

[Backwoods Presbyterian]

Wow. Sorry to hear about that unfortunate young man Bill.

 

[R. Scott Clark]

someone pursuing the path of the pastorate seems ill-fitted to the task while attending, do some staff members counsel such a man to consider a different path? Would doing that be improper or problematic?

Yes, though we do not and cannot usurp the role of the church, our faculty are ministers called by their congregations to exercise their ministries in the context of the seminary on behalf of the churches.

One way we e exercise that ministry is by sitting down with a student who needs counsel. Yes, I've seen students who, in my judgment, did not belong in ministry. Some of them have gone on to justify that estimate. Others, however, have surprised me. A few of our MA students have, after graduation, decided that they were called to pastoral ministry and have pursued ordination and done quite well. Sometimes there is real fire in the belly of these quiet academic-looking types.

Let me encourage the churches to contact us as a matter of practice when they are considering a WSC grad.

 

[Pergamum]

Dr Clark,

How is the issue of the existence of Seminaries similar to the issue of Parachurches?

I often hear pastors who have gone to seminary talk very negatively about all parachurches across the board and then define the term "parachurch" in a way that also puts most seminaries under the heading of "parachurch?"

 

[R. Scott Clark]

Dr Clark,

How is the issue of the existence of Seminaries similar to the issue of Parachurches?

I often hear pastors who have gone to seminary talk very negatively about all parachurches across the board and then define the term "parachurch" in a way that also puts most seminaries under the heading of "parachurch?"

If you'll search the archives here we've discussed this at length. It's a tension but it's not irreconcilable with my ecclesiology.

The theory is that Christians are free to form private societies to do any number of things. There are three functions that belong solely to the church, however: Preaching of the Word, Administration of the sacraments, and the administration of church discipline. Private societies may administer relief or education or other functions.

The training of pastors has not been, for most of the history of the Reformed churches, a strictly or solely ecclesiastical function. In the Reformation the ministers were trained in universities with a BA and often an MA. More often than not they simply had a good liberal arts education. Later, with the rise of Protestant academies, something like seminaries began to take shape, but they were theology faculties in universities which were parallel to the Roman theology faculties.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, as the Enlightenment captured the universities, the theology faculties were either exiled or turned into Religion (sociology) departments or eliminated.

That WTS came into existence in 1929, as it did was partly a matter of principle -- Machen argued that the spirituality of the church precluded the church teaching Greek and history etc -- and partly a matter of pragmatics. Most of the orthodox men at Old Princeton believed they had to leave in order to fulfill their vocation but they couldn't do so with ecclesiastical sanction because the PCUSA had, in large measure, turned against them.

Thus, in the 20th century, for the most part, conservative evangelical and Reformed seminaries have been more or less in exile.

As I've mentioned, all our faculty at WSC are ministers and we fulfill our ministries as teachers her under the oversight of consistories, sessions, presbyteries, and classes.

We're the seminary to begin to arrogate to itself the functions of the church, that would be highly problematic. This is why I refused to help administer communion at Wheaton when I taught there. A school has no business administering holy communion! Likewise, I refuse to treat ETS as if it were so quasi-synodical body. It's no such thing. It's a gathering of "evangelical" (whatever that might mean) scholars and no more.